County, school money trails are clear as mud

By Richard P. Quirk

Published: Thursday, February 21, 2013 at 07:40 PM.

None of the county departments ever release statements of exactly where the money goes. There is no transparency. We are just supposed to accept what we are told. I was told a long time ago that if you follow the money, the truth comes out. Maybe the Onslow County Irate Taxpayers Association needs to be resurrected and just drive everyone nutty.

I would like to comment on the Board of Education’s decision to join the fray and raise taxes. It is a little bigger than just them. Remember the scam we got when we were told that the property tax would be reduced by a cent (or so). That made everyone happy, but the rest of the story wasn’t presented to us by the county commissioners — that being that a property revaluation was going to happen. That negated the reduction, and the talk became negative as the commissioners did that around re-election time and they got the vote. Our property taxes went up.

Now the Board of Education is asking for $149 million (now $75 million) for various projects that, according to them, are needed. Isn’t building maintenance included in the budget each year? I can understand the replacement of buildings, but that is known when the buildings are built as they are expected to have a life of “x” number of years.

This bond is being presented as an immediate need and is projected to raise property taxes by about 6-plus cents.

The request was dropped to $75 million with an understanding that an additional request would happen very soon after that. Now, dropping the request to $75 million would reduce the property-tax increase to about 4-plus cents. Why wouldn’t it drop to maybe 3-plus cents? If they ask for an additional $75 million next year, the rate would be another 4-plus cents, which would really increase our taxes to roughly 8-plus cents. None of this is lining up to me.

The idea of the lawsuit is a good public relations exercise. Instead of the county commissioners making the hard decisions for which they were elected they, like the rest of the country, will let us be governed by a judge. That way the commissioners can say it wasn’t them that did it and their hands stay clean.

At least the Feb. 16 letter by Chris Moncourtois headlined, “Board of Education holds back on truth,” revealed who set the valuation. I wrote a couple of years ago about who tells the county how much vehicle tax we pay on our vehicles. A commissioner did call me and tell me that the automobile industry sets the property-tax values. I would like to know exactly who and how that works. In that same conversation, I was told that the tax was valuable because the money went to education.

None of the county departments ever release statements of exactly where the money goes. There is no transparency. We are just supposed to accept what we are told. I was told a long time ago that if you follow the money, the truth comes out. Maybe the Onslow County Irate Taxpayers Association needs to be resurrected and just drive everyone nutty.